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The year began with a blast of sadness: news that Lhasa de Sela, one of Canada’s finest musicians and a friend of ours, had died of breast cancer at 37.

Lhasa’s songs—performed in Spanish, French and English—have an utterly unique sound, like lullabies for a world in pain. But Lhasa also understood the power of music to transform, and she was quick to share her great gift with social movements that inspired her. "I know a song sung at the right moment can be such a very powerful thing," Lhasa wrote to us a few years ago.

Contrary to countless reports, the debacle in Copenhagen was not everyone's fault. It did not happen because human beings are incapable of agreeing, or are inherently self-destructive. Nor was it all was China's fault, or the fault of the hapless UN.

There's plenty of blame to go around, but there was one country that possessed unique power to change the game. It didn't use it. If Barack Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative and inspiring commitment to getting the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, all the other major emitters would have stepped up. The EU, Japan, China and India had all indicated that they were willing to increase their levels of commitment, but only if the U.S. took the lead. Instead of leading, Obama arrived with embarrassingly low targets and the heavy emitters of the world took their cue from him.

It's the second to last day of the climate conference and I have the worst case of laryngitis of my life. I open my mouth and nothing comes out.

It's frustrating because I was just at Hillary Clinton's press conference and desperately wanted to ask her a question – or six. She said that the U.S. would contribute its "share" to a $100-billion financing package for developing countries by 2020 – but only if all countries agreed to the terms of the climate deal that the U.S. has slammed on the table here, which include killing Kyoto, replacing legally binding measures with the fuzzy concept of "transparency," and nixing universal emissions targets in favor of vague "national plans" that are mashed together. Oh, and abandoning the whole concept (which the U.S. agreed to by singing the UN climate convention) that the rich countries that created the climate crisis have to take the lead in solving it.

On the ninth day of the Copenhagen climate summit, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G-77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2 degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3-3.5 degree increase in Africa.

That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, "an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger" and "water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people." Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts the stakes like this: "We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale.... A global goal of about 2 degrees C is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development."

On Wednesday in Copenhagen, I interviewed Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the chief negotiator for the G77, the largest developing country bloc represented at the climate summit in Copenhagen. Over the course of the negotiations, Ambassador Lumumba has gained a reputation for candor, putting the stakes for Africa in stark, emotional terms.